I think that the default equalization of the alpine simply sounded better then the empeg, but that someone with more experience could make the empeg sound as good if not better then my old head unit.

Which was one of my points: That many aftermarket car stereos artificially increase the bass and treble a little bit above "flat". I, too, noticed that the Empeg did not do this. Its output was much flatter than most car stereos at the default settings. You are right in that the Empeg needs some EQ tweaking before it sounds like the other stereos.

Regarding your point about bass and treble: You defininitely should notice a loss of very-high-frequency data in an MP3, but there shouldn't be any noticeable difference in the low-end stuff. The only difference there should be differences in the default EQ of the head unit's output. At least that's the way I understand MP3s to work, I don't know if that's really for sure the true case.

Anyone else experience the same thing?

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Tony Fabris